It’s that time of year again. Sleet falls as Helsinki’s Expo and Convention Centre fills with founders and tech professionals in black hoodies. Strobe lights cut through the darkened halls. Startups meet investors and deals take shape. The atmosphere feels closer to a music festival than a business conference.
It’s time for Slush.
Founded in Helsinki in 2008, Slush has grown into one of the world’s leading startup events, describing itself as the world’s largest gathering of venture capital. More than 12,000 people attend each year, including startup founders, investors and media representatives.
The business of big ideas
Slush unites ambitious startups and some of the world’s biggest companies.
Helsinki becomes a meeting point for the global startup scene as Slush gives founders opportunities to pitch their companies, meet investors and connect with potential customers and business partners. The programme combines talks and presentations with meetings between companies seeking funding and investors looking for new ventures.
Alongside young companies seeking funding, Slush has attracted speakers from across business, technology, politics and the arts. Past guests have included Skype cofounder Niklas Zennström, DoorDash cofounder and CEO Tony Xu, composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, former US vice-president Al Gore and Britain’s Prince William. Finnish political leaders have also taken the stage, as have representatives of global giants such as Amazon, Google, Alibaba and Spotify.
Alongside the main event at Helsinki’s Expo and Convention Centre, Slush spreads across the capital with a packed programme of side events.
Slush has also provided a platform for Finnish companies with global ambitions. Wolt, the Helsinki-founded food delivery company, was first tested in private beta at Slush in 2014. That was the year Wolt cofounder Miki Kuusi, who had been CEO of Slush for four years, left to focus on the startup. Wolt subsequently expanded internationally and, in 2022, was acquired by US-based DoorDash.
In November 2017, the second-generation Oura Ring was unveiled at Slush, marking an important milestone for the Finnish-founded health technology company. Worn on a finger like a regular ring, the smart ring tracks sleep, activity and physiological signals to help users understand their health. The launch helped bring the product to a wider audience, with sales of the second-generation ring reaching nearly 10,000 in the months that followed. Today, Oura has millions of members around the world.
And here’s a cool fact about Slush: the event is brought to life each year by students and recent graduates, alongside a large team of volunteers. Behind the black hoodies, flashing lights and big ambitions is a healthy dose of talkoot spirit – the Finnish tradition in which people come together to accomplish a large task.
Text and photos by Emilia Kangasluoma, November 2026
